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The Argentine Pampas, one of the largest plains throughout the world, has experienced during the last 50 years a strong rise in the water table level, with the consequent increase in the frequency of floods. This dynamics is associated to two processes that took place during this period over this zone. In the first place, the annual rainfall has shown a positive trend. Secondly, field crops have expanded throughout the Pampas, displacing grasslands and pastures, i.e., there has been a land use change. Based on numerical simulations with a properly calibrated and verified hydrological model, distributed in space and continuous in time, this paper shows that the increase in rainfall is the prime phenomenon explaining the increase in groundwater levels, but that vegetation also plays a very significant role. Moreover, the non linear response of the hydrological system to changes in precipitation and land use is put into evidence, as the combination of both effects produces a result that is much less intense than the sum of each of the individual effects by themselves. Additionally, the model indicates that there is an exponential relationship between the water table depth and the flooded areas, identifying a value of 2 meters for the water table depth as a threshold below which the flooded area grows significantly.

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This page is a summary of: Influencia de los cambios en el uso del suelo y la precipitación sobre la dinámica hídrica de una cuenca de llanura extensa. Caso de estudio: Cuenca del Río Salado, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ribagua, July 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/23863781.2018.1495990.
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